Although the hemoculture methodologies have popularly been used conventionally as a mean to verify bacteria in the blood, since this methodology needs about from 3 to 14 days to culture and isolate the subjected bacteria and detection rates thereby are as low as about 10%, it was not well contributed in the diagnosis for treating serious diseases like sepsis.
The present inventors had invented, to solve such problems, a method for detecting and identifying exogenous-microorganisms digested with phagocytes comprising a step of detecting genes from such exogenous-microorganisms in the phagocytes by in situ hybridization employing a probe which can specifically hybridize with the genes (Japanese Patent Publication No. 7-40).
The method of Japanese Patent Publication No. 7-40 have been in the limelight in the field of infectious deseases because, in comparison with the conventional hemoculture methodology, the method allowed about four times rapidly detection of the subjected bacteria in bloods from patients who are under the suspicion about sepsis, and detection results were appeared within 24 hours.
Objects of the present inventions is an improvement of detection effects and of detection sensitivity to be offered by the method according to Japanese Patent Publication No. 7-40 for detecting and/or identifying causative microorganisms of infectious diseases by taking phagocytes from the clinical specimens containing active phagocytes, immobilizing the phagocytes so taken, treating the phagocytes to improve cell membrane permeabilities thereof, further treating the phagocytes to bare DNA in the causative microorganisms which might be existed in the phagocytes, in situ hybridizing DNA so bared with detective DNA probe(s) which can hybridize with such bared DNA under stringent conditions, and detecting and/or identifying the causative microorganisms based on signals so detected.